496 Rural Cemeteries. 



It seems very absurd, after the designer of the grounds has 

 tastefully laid them out, in a style the very opposite of for- 

 mality, in order to insure a pleasing and picturesque efFect, 

 that individuals should deliberately destroy this whole effect, 

 by erecting square and angular fences around the family 

 enclosures. If these are built, the walks ought to be made 

 in the same angular and geometrical style, for the sake of con' 

 gruity. To prove this, let a plan of the grounds be drawn 

 on paper ; and any one would see, at once, that the irregular 

 serpentine paths could never be made to harmonize with the 

 regular squares of the family lots. The same objection might 

 be made to the square lots, without a fence. But if these 

 squares were marked only by slight eminences, rising by im- 

 perceptible gradations, their formality would not be sufficiently 

 apparent to produce a harsh dissonance with the general style 

 of the grounds. 



When I look upon all these things, I do not believe them 

 wholly the result of the sentiments they seem to express. 

 The idea of fences may have originated partly in some such 

 feeling in the builder of the first monuments, and was imi- 

 tated by others without consideration. None can deny the 

 impropriety of introducing into these sacred premises any- 

 thing expressive of selfishness or pride, or anything that does 

 not comport with true religious feeling. All would agree that 

 the style of the grounds, and of the monuments of the dead, 

 should not, by their expression, deny the doctrines of that 

 faith in which they lived and died who are buried there. 



The fashionable burial grounds in the suburbs of our cities 

 are called rural cemeteries. A spot cannot be rural that is 

 decorated with the ornaments that distinguish the magnificent 

 houses of the city. If we plant a tree in an enclosure, with 

 an iron fence around it, it does not refuse to grow. If planted 

 in a proper soil, nature "will give it vigor and beauty. But 

 the tree cannot stamp the impress of nature upon an iron 

 railing. The tree belongs to nature, like the bird in a cage, 

 and that is all. In a fashionable cemetery, which is filled 

 with the works of vanity, the trees and the flowers may yield 

 an agreeable sensation of the country ; but the simplicity of 



